Tagged: Yoshihiro Tatsumi

There are a decent amount of books coming out this week, and one title in particular made something fairly clear to me. Natsume Ono is the new Fumi Yoshinaga. “How is that?” you might ask? The beginning of Fumi Yoshinaga’s American career began with Antique Bakery, which brought her unique wispy art style to fans in The States, and separated her from most other manga artists, drawing lots of attention, combined with great story-telling. Also, you can’t forget the gay pastry chef, and various shonen ai undertones. Well, Not Simple, Natsume Ono’s premier book can be described much the same way. Between her very unique art style (more akin to American indy comic artists), and the awesome gay character and other undertones as well as an amazing story, these are what rake in the girl fans. Never mind the fact that her second book was also about a restaurant, and still pretty Boy Love-ish.

When I was going over the new list of things coming out this week, I discovered that there was another new book coming in from Natsume Ono called “House Of Five Leaves“. This would be her fourth title release in less than a year, it looks like someone has a fan over at Viz. In this one a masterless samurai named Akitsu Masanosuke is a skilled and loyal swordsman, but his naive, diffident nature has more than once caused him to be let go by the lords who employ him. Hungry and desperate, he agrees to become a bodyguard for Yaichi, the charismatic leader of a group calling itself “Five Leaves.” Although disturbed by the gang’s sinister activities, Masa begins to suspect that Yaichi’s motivations are not what they seem. And despite his misgivings, the deeper he’s drawn into the world of the Five Leaves, the more he finds himself fascinated by these devious, mysterious outlaws. Continue reading →

The Eisner Awards were presented Friday evening in concurrence with Comic-Con International at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. Onstage guests included the cast of the imminent Scott Pilgrim film, Thomas Jane, Ben Garant (Reno 911), voice actor Phil Lamarr (Futurama, Samurai Jack). The event was MC’d by Maurice LaMarche (“The Brain,” from Pinky & The Brain and notable veteran of many other cartoons).

There were also some real life comic creators there, presenting awards to their peers, the likes of which included Chris Claremont, Milo Manara(!), James Robinson, Berkeley Breathed, Peter Bagge, James Sturm, and Jillian Tamaki.

The works below are linked to either the item on the FPNYC webstore or the winner’s homepage where applicable.

So its a reeeeally small week this week, about 10 books. Three of those books are Mobile Suit Gundam related. First up is the 9th (and I believe final) volume of Gundam: Ecole Du Ciel. In case you were curious, Ecole Du Ciel first started coming out in the states in 2005. That’s five years to put out 9 books. The only excuse for that kind of fan-teasing is some horrible debilitating disease that left the artist minus both their hands for a couple years. On top of that, Tokyopop seems to think they are justified in raising the price on the book not only to $10.99 like they did the rest of their series, but instead this final volume is going to be $12.99, like anyone who even was reading the series 5 years ago hasn’t already fallen out of love with, or plain old forgotten about the whole thing. I know they had issues with a lot of downsizing in the last couple years, but it has been 2 years sine volume 8 released, and even that was really far behind it’s predecessor. At some point in the last two years you would think Tokyopop would have switched one of their crappy pseudo-manga books if just to finish a series that at least has pretty covers and nice artwork. But I digress.

This may not be fair, entirely. I spent more time with Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life than I did any other book this year. And it was well worth it. Tatsumi’s illustrated text, (historic, autobiographic, economic) of the Japan that he grew up in and the growth of the industry there that we currently know as manga, is an even handed, revealing work of graphic prose that evokes the youth and imagination – as well as the industrious nature – of a young artist. Soon after publication, A Drifting Life was awarded the Osamu Tezuka prize in Japan. Well worth an Eisner in this country, and well worth owning.

Although I wholeheartedly agree with her on many of her selections, Kai-Ming should be taken to task for rating badass Death Metal comedy DETROIT METAL CITY at a lowly #5. Shame on you, Cha. Shame on you.